Dir: Michel
Hazanavicius
Starring: Jean
Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman
The
most talked about film since The King’s
Speech finally arrives dripping with plaudits, nominations and awards. So
is it everything that it’s supposed to be? Not quite.
George
Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a big name actor in the silent film industry. Peppy
Miller (Berenice Bejo) is a nobody hoping to become a star of silent movies. With
the advent of sound, Peppy’s career takes off and George refuses to change with
the times and his popularity plummets but a romance develops between them.
The
film is a love letter to the era of the silent film. It is certainly something
different and lovely in a time where big action blockbusters make the most
money of any film of the year and are held by the studios as their hottest properties.
Hopefully it can open up the world of silent films to a new audience, bringing
back the black and white classics of people such as Charlie Chaplin. Having the
film silent and in black and white works and it’s certainly to be celebrated
that Hazanavicius has managed to create a 100 minute film in this style which
never seems to drag or to feel laboured. However, when the film ended, I didn’t
feel like I’d just sat in the cinema and watched a film, it could have just
been something on television.
The
acting is fine, everybody including the dog do perfectly well in their roles. I
wouldn’t go as far as saying the performances are exemplary, the performances
are all exaggerated as silent movie performances had to be, but this means they
don’t stand up to other nuanced and better performances of recent times. Even
the highly talked about dog is just a good performing dog and nothing more. The
forming relationship between Peppy and George is effective and it’s lovely to
see how the relationship develops. A shot of them passing on a stairway is well
staged even if it is a little too obviously a staged image for their differing
careers.
It is a
lovely and charming film and something different and original which is getting
to be more of a rarity now. It is
certainly worth a watch but it is not the masterpiece that it’s been made out
to be and I’m not particularly bothered about seeing it again.
4 out of 5 Buttons
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